Digital Technology and Music / Digital Sampling Challenges Both Theory, Practice of Music Industry

Jon Pareles, N. Y. T. N. S., THE JOURNAL RECORD

NEW YORK - Digital sampling, a new technology that
allows any sound to be recorded, re-created and manipulated by
compute r, has begun to change the way music is made. It also
challenges the ethical, legal and economic basis of copyright
protection - and may demand new definitions of originality in music.

Sampling can be compared to cloning an entire organism from a
single cell. A digital sampler can generate a melody - or a symphony
- from a one-note sample. With a sampler and a handful of record
albums, for instance, a keyboardist can easily fabricate a
""performance'' from the sounds of John Coltrane's saxophone, Gene
Krupa's drums, Paul McCartney's electric bass, Murray Perahia's piano
and the voices of Enrico Caruso and Sarah Vaughan - combined in a
piece that they never performed.

""Sound sampling is the epitome of technology trying to squeeze
into copyright law where it just doesn't fit,'' said M. William
Krasilovsky, a lawyer and the co-author of the authoritative ""This
Business of Music.''

""Suppose you use Jascha Heifetz's sound to play "Rock Around the
Clock,' '' Krasilovsky said. ""If you put his name on it, you would
be abusing his right of privacy. But if you simply used his
distinguishable sound and refashioned it, it may be protected under
copyright law as a derivative work.''

Sampling has already begun to have a major impact on the music
business on many fronts, including these:

- Economically, sampling threatens the employment of studio and
concert performers. With the realistic sounds of strings, winds,
orchestras and choirs at a single player's disposal, there is less
need to hire musicians on individual instruments.

- Legally, the ability of digital samplers to borrow
recognizable sounds raises questions that current laws do not
address. For example, if the sounds of recognizable musicians are
assembled ina facsimile performance, whose performance is it? Does
it belong to the musicians who played the samples, or the musicians
who assembled them, or both? …

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